As Murray, who was on the ship, knew the frightfully crevassed character of the ground which Mackintosh and McGillan had determined to cross, little hope of their safety remained.
Judge, then, the joy of those on board the Nimrod when two men came out to meet the ship on its arrival at Cape Royds, and one of them was seen to be McGillan.
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE WESTERN PARTY
How well Joyce and his party, consisting of Mackintosh, Day and Martin, placed a depot of stores about fourteen miles off Minna Bluff, and how glad the Southern Party were to find them there has already been told.
In the depoting of these stores Joyce made two journeys, starting for the first from winter quarters on January 15 and returning to Hut Point on January 31, and leaving there again with a second load of stores (which had been brought by a party from the Nimrod) and reaching the Bluff Depot for the second time on February 8.
On their re-arrival at this depot they found, to their surprise, that the Southern Party had not appeared, and for some days Joyce and his companions searched the horizon with glasses, in the hope of sighting the overdue travellers.
They waited until the Southern Party was eleven days after the time fixed for their return, and then decided to lay a depot flag in towards the Bluff so that by no chance could the food be missed, and, secondly, to march due south to look for the Southern Party. In this march they were, as is known, unsuccessful in finding the weary travellers, and eventually they returned to the Bluff Depot and found everything as they had left it.
Filled with gloomy thoughts as to the fate of Adams, Marshall, Wild and myself—for we were then eighteen days overdue—they started on the 16th to march back to the coast. But although they did not find us, they had nevertheless saved our lives by the provisions they had so laboriously brought to the depot.
At the same time that we of the Southern Party were fighting our way towards the Pole, the Western Party, consisting of Armytage, Priestley and Brocklehurst, were working in the western mountains.
On December 9 they left winter quarters and reached the "stranded moraines" four days later. These moraines, which were found by the Discovery expedition, are relics of the days of more extensive glaciation, and as they present a most varied collection of rocks they are of very great interest.